Diaspora groups link processes of globalization to conflicts over identity and territory. Globalization has increased cross-border migration and decreased communication and travel costs, thereby making it easier for migrants to form diaspora networks that build links between the original homeland and current place of residence. Those forced across borders by war commonly have a specific set of traumatic memories and hence create specific types of “conflict-generated diasporas” that sustain and sometimes amplify their strong sense of symbolic attachment to the homeland. “Homeland” is often understood in specific territorial terms where a space from which a group has been forcefully detached assumes a high symbolic value. Globalization has increased rather than decreased this particular type of territorial attachment and thereby shaped the dynamics of certain homeland conflicts.

Conflict-generated diasporas – with their origins in conflict and their identity linked to symbolically important territory – often play critical roles with regard to homeland conflicts. As other scholars have noted, diaspora remittances are key resources to a conflict and often sustain parties engaged in civil war. In addition, and the focus of this research, such diasporas frequently have a particularly important role in framing conflict issues. Diaspora groups created by conflict and sustained by memories of the trauma tend to be less willing to compromise and therefore reinforce and exacerbate the protractedness of conflicts.

Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency in November 1963 with a crowded agenda of difficult and challenging issues both at home and abroad. Africa occupied a peripheral position on Johnson's list of priorities, and the president sought to avoid the diversion of attention or resources to the continent. The euphoria and optimism of the early 1960s as dozens of new states achieved independence, ready to play an important role in John Kennedy's New Frontier, had faded. From Johnson's perspective, Africa was best kept on the back burner, handled by the State Department bureaucracy or ignored as much as possible. Africa was the farthest corner of the world to Johnson, the place to threaten to send indiscreet officials who drew his ire. The Great Society at home, the obsession with fighting the war in Vietnam, and other more important areas of the world all deserved and received greater attention. As one official put it, Africa was “the last issue considered, the first aid budget cut.” Only occasionally – such as when the Congo threatened to erupt into a major crisis in 1964, when African issues required a decision at the United Nations, or when domestic interest groups generated enough attention to make an issue salient – did Johnson have to face decisions regarding the continent. Otherwise, the administration successfully kept Africa off the agenda.